Ubuntu Wiki

Phone and tablet

On the phone and tablet, the only appearance configuration should be setting the background picture for the welcome screen. Therefore the screen should be called simply “Background”. On the home screen, the “Background” icon should include a thumbnail of the currently selected background.

Without external display

To minimize interaction needed, in the normal case where there is no external display, the “Background”screen should act as its own preview. Therefore, it should customize the header bar to 50% opacity, so that you can see the current background in exactly the current crop.

Tapping the “New” button should open a picker for selecting a new image, including an “Ubuntu Backgrounds” collection (bug 1288364) that does not appear when the picker is called from other apps.

The “Recent” list should consist of the ten most recently chosen distinct background settings, that is, image plus crop. This means there may be multiple recent background settings that use the same picture but with different crops. A crop should be saved whenever you leave the “Background” screen.

If you choose a new image, that image should zoom up from the “New” button to be shown as the current background. And if if you tap any of the “Recent” items, that image should similarly zoom up to become the current background. At the same time, any “Recent” items to its left should slide along one spot, making way for the previous selection to zoom down to become the most “Recent” item. If you chose a new image, the least recent setting should disappear from the list.

Long-pressing a “Recent” item should reveal a context menu with a single item, “Delete”. (Deleting recent background settings will be a rarely-needed feature, usually wanted only after relationship breakups.)

In the usual case where there is not enough room to show the “New” button plus all the “Recent” items in a single row:

• The entire row should be scrollable horizontally.
• To indicate that there is more off-screen, the spacing between the “Recent” items should be expanded depending on the screen size, just enough that one of them is exactly half off-screen.
• The scroll position should reset whenever you return to the screen (so that you don’t lose sight of the “New” button) or choose a different background (so that you can see the previous selection become the new most recent, and undo it if necessary).

The standard gestures should zoom and pan the picture to choose the area (bug 1368286). In case you do not realize this, iIf you have been on the “Background” screen for five seconds after making a selection, without doing anything else, the “Pinch to crop” hint should fade in and out over two seconds, followed by the “Drag to move” hint. The hints should not appear if the current image is exactly the size of the phone screen (suggesting that it was supplied specifically to be used, uncropped, on that handset).

With external display

When an external display is connected, the top-level “Background” screen should instead show two previews: “Phone” and “External”.

Tapping either of them should navigate down the page stack to a “Phone” or “External Display” screen, that behaves the same way as the “Background” screen does for a standalone phone. The only difference is that the "External Display" screen should show its preview in a frame that is the correct aspect ratio.

Background settings for the phone display and the external display should be completely independent.

PC

Ubuntu 14.04

The “Appearance” panel’s “Behavior” [sic] tab should include “Show the menus for a window:” radio buttons, “In the menu bar” and “In the window’s title bar”.

Ubuntu 14.10

The Launcher settings should be moved from their three previous locations (“Look”, “Behavior”, and “Displays”) into a single “Launcher & Menus” panel, including the previous menu settings. This will make the Launcher settings easier to find, and also make the contents of the “Background & Theme” panel closer to the “Background” panel on phone and tablet.